Danniella Westbrook: I did a line of cocaine while giving birth

DANNIELLA Westbrook revealed today she took cocaine while giving BIRTH to her
son Kai.

The former EastEnders star made the shocking admission on a special celebrity
edition of The Jeremy Kyle Show.

The ex-addict  who has now been clean for nearly 12 years and whose
septum famously caved in due to drug use  told show host Jeremy: “I
took drugs right up to the moment I delivered him, in the bathroom of the
suite.”

Jeremy told her: “You took drugs right throughout your pregnancy?… this
to me, and I’ve done this a very long time, is one of the most shocking
things I’ve ever heard.”

He then asked if it was true that the soap actress took cocaine while in the
delivery room.

Danniella admitted: “Whilst in labour I asked them to leave the room.”

And she added that when the doctors took Kai away to clean him just minutes
after he was born she went back into the bathroom to take ANOTHER line.

She told Jeremy: “I was a drug addict, a complete and utter drug addict
of the highest order.”

The talk show host then told her that she was lucky that her son, who is now
16, wasn’t harmed by her drug use.

The 39-year-old replied: “I could have killed him yeah, and my daughter
when I was pregnant with her.

“I tried for years to make it up to them by buying them things and
letting them get away with things, and then suddenly my husband said to me
‘you’re actually not helping them, you’re ruining them and what you actually
just need to do is be a mum’.”

Danniella, who was a single mum to Kai before she met her now husband Kevin,
also added that while alone looking after him she would take drugs whenever
he fell asleep.

And she said her drug use once got so out of control she had a coke ‘fit’ and
Kai – then only three – put a bar of chocolate in her mouth to save her.

She told Kyle: “I had a cocaine convulsion and my three-year-old son was
trying to put a Mars bar in my throat, trying to get me to come round
because he was the only person in the house.”

Danniella, who played Sam Mitchell in the BBC1 soap, said she felt so bad she
wanted Kai removed from her.

She said: “I asked social services to take him from me because I didn’t
have any other help, I didn’t have any outlet, the child was my whole world,
but you can’t have a relationship with anything or anyone while you’re
having a relationship with cocaine.

“It took a lot for me to ring them and say ‘You’re going to have to come
and get my child because I need to get well’.”

The former Dancing On Ice star also revealed that she still feels deeply
ashamed, no matter how long she stays clean.

She said: “Shockingly guilty, I feel really ashamed a lot of the time and
it always seems that no matter how well I do, 11 years down the line, how
well I do if I go back to EastEnders, do a good job, did Dancing On Ice, did
a good job, wrote a book … I still feel that huge amount of shame for
being known as a drug addict.”

And the blonde told how her final wake-up call was when she was told she had “four
weeks to live”.

She admitted: “My wake-up call was when I was three months pregnant with
my daughter, and by that time I was a crack cocaine addict, and they said to
me ‘you’ve got four weeks to live’.”

She also heaped praise on Kevin for seeing something worth saving in her when
no-one else did.

And for sticking with her despite the fact she continually stole from him.

Danniella said: “He just loved me and he believed in me, he saw something
in me that no-one else saw, he saw something worth saving and I don’t think
my family or anyone did…

“All the time I used to steal money from him, I stole loads of stuff from
him.”

Eventually Kevin sent Danniella to a treatment centre in the US, where she
finally weaned herself off drugs.

She said: “He put me in five treatment centres and in the end he packed
me off to Arizona because I was pregnant with Jodie and he’d just lost his
mum the month before and he just put me on a plane to Arizona and made them
take my passport off me.

“I was so drugged out I didn’t remember going there.”

Pregnant Danniella stayed at the facility for three-and-a-half months.

She said: “The first two weeks I was a horrible person and then I just
sat there one night and thought ‘if I am meant for more than this then just
let me get it’ and I got it, and I didn’t want to leave there because it was
so safe.”